If nothing else, this demonstrates that satire is well and truly dead. When the Muslim Brotherhood starts demanding apologies for offending its delicate sensibilities, we have reached a place where irony has no meaning. (Allahpundit's headline is classic and don't miss his comprehensive list of links).

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's top Islamic cleric asked Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday to take back recent remarks he made about Islam and unleashed a string of counteraccusations against Christianity, raising tensions before the pontiff's November visit — his first to a Muslim country.

The Vatican hastened to defend the pope, saying that the pontiff wanted to promote respect and dialogue toward other religions, "obviously also toward Islam."

Ali Bardakoglu, head of Turkey's powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, said he was deeply offended by remarks about Islamic holy war made Tuesday by the pope during a visit to Germany, calling them "extraordinarily worrying, saddening and unfortunate."

We now cut ahead to the really good part:

Bardakoglu said he expected an apology from the pope and said it was Christianity, not Islam, that popularized conversion by the sword, according to Turkey's state-owned Anatolia news agency.[emphasis added]

Now let's just stop for a second and consider that the fellow who is saying this is Turkish.

But the Turks didn't originate in Turkey, did they? When the Turks showed up, other people where there. Greek people, mostly.

This must be the parallel universe that Bardakoglu inhabits, because that is the only way his next statement makes any sense at all:

"The church and the Western public, because they saw Islam as the enemy, went on crusades. They occupied Istanbul, they killed thousands of people. Orthodox Christians and Jews were killed and tortured," he said.

This is a bit much, even for the Associated Press which can't help but adding this historical note:

Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, was the capital of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Christian empires before being conquered by Ottoman Muslims in 1453.

But it was a peaceful conquest. A voluntary one.

The Christians "saw war against those outside the Christian world as a holy duty," Bardakoglu said. "That's why the Western clerics always have in the back of their minds a crusade mentality and the idea of holy war."

Bardakoglu said he suspected Benedict had the same mentality and asked the pope to "look in the mirror" before making remarks against Islam.

Janissaries were non-Muslims forced into slavery and used as soldiers by the Ottoman Turks. You know, the peaceful people who just sort of wandered into Constantinople - we mean Istanbul - without using any violence whatsoever.

Of course, since dhimmis could not carry weapons under Islamic law, they had to convert to Islam.

Let's go back to that earlier passage, shall we?

Bardakoglu said he expected an apology from the pope and said it was Christianity, not Islam, that popularized conversion by the sword, according to Turkey's state-owned Anatolia news agency.[emphasis added]

The Posse is at a loss to find out which major element of Christian military power was derived from enslaved non-Christians. The Crusaders, for all of their alleged evils, were born Christian.

Of course, one can make too much of one isolated example (though Janissaries formed the cornerstone of Ottoman military power), so let us see if there are any others.

How about Mameluke? Hmm, looks like they ran Egypt for a couple of centuries.

Gosh, not one but two examples of enslaved non-Muslim subject peoples forcibly converted to Islam and used as shock troopers against the Prophet's percieved enemies.

The Posse does not mean to imply that all Muslims believe in conversion by the sword. Indeed, we are certain that quite a few believe that this is utterly unacceptable.

Our problem is that these blatant falsehoods keep being spread without a peep from knowledgable Muslims.

Had the head of Turkey's Muslim association said "We completely agree that violent conversion is wrong. Islam used to do that but, like the Catholics, we're happy to have it over with," we might have a more generous view of Muslims of all kinds. These aren't fringe figures, either.

But instead we get stale, pathetic lies.

So given that allegedly mainstream, respectable Muslim leaders feel fully within their rights to lie through their teeth to the rest of the world, the Posse thinks it highly understandable for some of us to wonder if Islam itself isn't the problem.

The Gates of Vienna (which may be upgraded to full Posse member status for its outstanding historical perspective) posted an excellent summary of the second Siege of Vienna, noting that it concluded on September 11-12, 1683.

We like this site because it makes it clear that while Christianity has constantly wrung its hands about the Crusades, Islam has far more wars and conquests to its credit - indeed its expansion was not through slaves or poor preachers wandering through a vast and hostile empire, but rather conquerors who preached with one hand on the Koran and the other on a sword hilt.

We cannot accept that Christianity and Islam are morally comparable in this respect. Christ did not raise and army and conquer Jerusalem. He did not send his disciples out to raise legions in His name and sweep the power of Rome aside in a holy war.

He died on the Cross, and rose again in glory - and in peace.

We sincerely hope that His Holiness continues this dialogue, and forces Islam's "moderate, mainstream" leaders to confront these inalienable truths.

The West can make peace with Islam only when it comes to terms with its own past.

Until that happens, we are wasting our time.

UPDATE: Big hat tip to Allahpundit, who provided the link to the Pope's remarks. We disagree, however with the statement that the Vatican has apologized. Clearly he wasn't attempting to bait Muslims and meant no offense. That intent is what the Vatican has made clear. It hasn't, however, repudiated or retracted the remarks.

Comments

This is in response to the post by Kharaman above.

Muslims were good to their slaves? Under every interpretation of Islamic law, even mild versions like the Maliki interpretation slave owners were entitled to force their slaves into having sex. We in the west call that rape and lock the degenerate filth who participate in it away.

Ever wonder why there aren't a whole lot of black people in Arab nations? They certainly imported many black slaves. Hell, some of those nations still had legal slavery until the 1960s. What happened to all those blacks? The males were castrated. The females weren't too desirable, so they weren't usually raped. That was reserved for lighter skinned slaves.

FYI, janissaries weren't exclusively christians, muslims were also allowed.
The crusaders (catholics) conquered and plundered Constantinopel in the 13th century, killed off most of the inhabitants, and burnt the ayasofia and stole the gold crosses, destroyed the orthodox church.
These crosses can still be seen, they're in Rome and Venice.
The Ottomans were related by blood with the orthodox dynasty which used to be Emperor in Constantinople. They used their army to claim the throne in the 15th century, in true byzantine fashion. After the conquest, they rebuilt the place, including the orthodox church.
The mamelukes in Egypt were mostly Turkish and Persian. Slavery in a muslim context is very different than that in the west. Slaves were often the kings, queens and rulers of muslim countries. The mamelukes slaves themselves ruled Egypt for 800 years.

To the vienna comment. The Ottoman women, both orthodox and muslim were all raped and killed after the catholics won.That sobieski is blaming the victims for his own raping killing pillaging soldiers.

You're right about the way the Turks (and the Arabs, and the Berbers, and the Persians, and the Moghuls) did business.

One of the things I left out of my post (to keep it from being too long) was what the Turks did with their Christian women captives as they were fleeing Vienna in 1683. They couldn't take them along (women only slow you down), so they "slashed them with their swords".

This was according to Sobieski's own account of the events. And, also according to him, many of the women were able to be saved by prompt medical care.